To ask what the country was like under a Labour government?

[user6776]

I'm too young to remember a proper Labour government. I was 12 when the Tories got voted in back in 2010 so that's all I've ever really known.

How much better was it than it is now? Why did Labour lose the election back then anyway?

Interested to hear people's opinions.

Unfortunately I can remember two

Victoria Climbie - died in 2000 and Peter Connolly (Baby P) died in 2007.

Thankfully she didn't die but Shannon Matthew's was kidnapped in a ludicrous ot involving her own mother in 2008

I know that Labour bought in tuition fees but at the they remained affordable til the Conservatives got their paws on them.

The NHS wasn't perfect then and I didn't say it was, but it was bloody fantastic especially compared to now.

I have made this point before, and will probably make it again. Between 1991 and 1995, there was a severe recession... the worst of my life (and i HAVE EXPERIENCED FOUR SO FAR). My BF was foreclosed on her mortgage, then made redundant. It was horrible but by the time the Tories lost the May 1997 election, everything was turning better. And Labour were elected (the tories were poison then too, but had done all the horrid harsh bits already) so Tony Blair and Gordon Brown swanned it with a landslide victory. And they did their first term really well.

(Apart from removing the pension dividend credit which sent most pension funds into losses and made pensions contribution based rather than earnings based, and put most pension plans into negative positions, which when you think about the scale of pension requirements, is probably the biggest and most expensive fuck up a government could make). Especially with clear demographic evidence in plain view that the boomer bulge was going to live longer than any other generation in history. And so, cost a lot more

In fact, in all the MN stuff I read, I am actually quite grateful to see that so much of the population are obese because it seems unlikely that we shall have to fund them for a long time.

I am actually quite grateful to see that so much of the population are obese because it seems unlikely that we shall have to fund them for a long time.

That really is the most horrible “Tory” comment I’ve read on mn for a long long time @Papyrophile and an absolute nailed on reason why I hope the Tories crash and burn in the election. Absolutely vile. But at least you’re a Tory who shows their true colours. Vile.

I'm not even a Tory... just hard nosed.

I've lived under 5 Labour governments:
Wilson
Wilson
Callaghan
Blair
Brown.
Absolutely zero difference EXCEPT that none of them were as useless as Cameron was.

Hard nosed or hard hearted?

Have you remembered then how Gordon Brown took the electoral flack for having to deal with the 2008 world financial crisis and that the Tories swanned in in 2010 and took The credit for things turning a corner? Or is your memory selective?

Why would you want to support idiocy?

Alistair Darling's autobiography (a good read BTW) made it abundantly clear that NO government (of any party) was going to escape the fallout of the 2008 GFC. The only option was going to be picking up the pieces and trying to stick them back togother with string and binder twine. The pain was always going to fall on the poorest and least able: it always does because the poorest and least able are less resilient in any situation.

As it happens, as the 2008 GFC took shape, I was in NZ on a longish sabbatical trip with DH and DS8, as DH was recovering from a series of major near fatal cardiac events. It was, for us, at the time a reset for health reasons. And when we returned a few months later, the person we had left in charge of our micro-business had run it almost into the ground. So no, we pay every last penny the taxman thinks we should, and we are net contributors for every one of the last 30 years. And no, I didn't pay personally the entire construction costs of any major infrastructure project.

They borrowed huge amounts though and the resulting austerity of the following Tory government was because of that.

Without bringing party politics into this economics-based argument, I really don't believe that any person or organisation could have done much better. Similarly, I don't believe that any politician or political party could have negotiated Covid, Putin/Ukraine or Brexit as adroitly as you feel you deserve. Most of politics is making stuff up on the hoof. Yep, I agree, it's not great right now, but you and I can contribute and make things improve. Or just snipe from social media.

😂😂

The tories didn't handle Ukraine/Putin, they did nothing, just reacted to events as we had no energy storage.
They gave us Brexit, which has turned out to be a huge waste of money and slower than otherwise growth...all so Boris could get to be PM.

Covid? the Tories mishandled that, huge fraud, corruption, badly timed LDs & Eat out to help out guff.

They ve also wrecked faith in Govts to do what is best for the country with their Downing street parties.

Of course you re bring party politics into it, you support the Tories and by your more recent posts on the obese, on the more extreme right of this party.

How can any ordinary citizen make things better? we've no control on what a Govt does once in power.

Your idea of making things better is to fuck off abroad isn't? or did you mean just for yourself?

Labour introduced a benefits system which paid some people more to stay at home than to work. Labour sold hundreds of government buildings and squandered the cash.

It felt good. Cool Britannia . It’s corny but I was in my 20s and things felt good. Museums in London became free, there were Sure Start centres, schools felt prioritised..

Tory austerity was because of the global credit crunch.

Labour sold hundreds of government buildings

I don’t think they did.

So why did other countries also affected by the “global” credit crunch not fuck over their poor and vulnerable in the way the Tories have? Don’t kid yourself that these bastards did it for any other reason than to feather their own nests 🤬

It wasn’t. It was ideological.

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/03/14/austerity-is-the-cause-of-the-uks-economic-malaise-george-osborne-set-us-on-the-ruinous-path-were-still-on/

I’m not sure that’s strictly true. When my daughter ( learning difficulties) started a special school nearly 30 years ago we were told then that places were becoming more in demand as more children with difficulties were surviving so there was more pressure on school places. And that hasn’t got any easier with increased diagnoses for child.
I can honestly say support for families was useless then and nothing has changed for us in all these years.

So why @Papyrophile are you referencing the fall out of one economic crisis and not the other?

I'm not, really. @BitOutOfPractice . I don't have a strong opinion here, because at nearly 70 I have seen governments of all parties make a horlicks of everything.

And because I have lived through multiple recessions and booms, and been old enough to recall the 1973-75 issues and lived in the US from 1980-85, and then experienced the 1990-1994 recession, and then a downturn in the late 1990s with an Asian collapse, followed by 2008 GFC, actually I don't really put the blame on any politicians. Obviously, some are cleverer than others. But most are victims of their own ambitions.

On my personal politics, because that's the question you'd like to nail me on as a bad person I sit firmly in the One Nation Tory field. I believe in equal rights and economic common sense. I am relaxed about same sex relationships, and skin colour is not something I think about. I tend to think that if a person comes to the UK as a migrant, then they should adopt our rules and values.

And your opinions?

Very personally, I was and am fortunate to have been born in 1957, into a MC family and to have been blessed with a very decent brain. So, I haven't inherited anything at all as both my parents are still alive and going strong at 90-ish. What I have in life is what I have made and earned.

They were a disaster every time, tax and spend like a drunken sailor. The tories have also been stupid but not as stupid. All politicians are unfit to govern really. Getting elected and governing are two different skill sets